Many popular sports activities are regularly accompanied the use of protective clothing and accessories. In particular, many sports with a high degree of possible contact from either other participants or accessories of the game require that those engaging in the activities be properly protected.
In particular, in such activities, the head is one of the most vulnerable areas of the human body. As a result, helmets are one (1) of the most common protective devices. Such helmets are utilized in activities ranging from football to motor sports to paintball. Common issues with such headgear include problems such physical discomfort, uncomfortable temperatures due to lack of ventilation, and limited visibility. Visibility is often further aggravated by the fact that many helmets utilized for purposes such as motor sports and paintball require the use of transparent or translucent face guards for the purposes of shielding the user's eyes from debris and the like. These faceguards often tend to become foggy due to condensation from the stuffy temperature conditions interior to the helmet.
Various attempts have been made to provide ventilated helmets. Examples of these attempts can be seen by reference to several U.S. patents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,881,198, issued in the name of Waters, describes a detachable air conditioning unit with a corresponding helmet device which provides threadably attachable air cooling and fan capabilities to the helmet.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,550, issued in the name of Hodgkinson et al., describes a protective head gear unit which includes filter vents in addition to a removable lens portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,010,813, issued in the name of Ahn et al., describes a leisure sports helmet with an integral fan and vents to provide convective heat removal for purposes of cooling a user's head.
Additionally, ornamental designs for headgear with a built-in fan exist, particularly U.S. Pat. No. D 297,584. However, none of these designs are similar to the present invention.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of these references suffer from one (1) or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Many such devices are not suitable for use with a variety of conventional sporting headgear styles, particularly existing helmets. Also, many such devices do not provide features of detachability when such ventilating or cooling features are not necessary. In addition, many such devices are not configured in a manner which mitigates condensation on a faceguard portion of the headgear. Accordingly, there exists a need for a sport helmet without the disadvantages as described above. The development of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so fulfills this need.